A couple of mini-Herculean labors have come to fruition here over the weekend. The newest issue of Mythic Delirium, Issue 25, is finished up and in the mail to all subscribers and contributors. And the first volume of Clockwork Phoenix is available as an e-book for the first time, released on Kindle and soon to be available at Weightless Books (and Mythic Delirium will be too, for that matter..)

I’ll talk about Mythic Delirium first. Our 25th issue features 20 new poems, including Catherynne M. Valente’s epic take on women in anime, “The Melancholy of Mechagirl,” Sonya Taaffe’s twist on the Commedia dell’Arte, a translation by Lawrence Schimel of Spanish poet Sofía Rhei’s “The Magic Walnut,” Jeannine Hall Gailey’s contemplation of “Little Girls, Atom Bombs,” Darrell Schweitzer’s suspicion as to who’s behind “Alien Graffiti,” Mary A. Turzillo’s musing on really really long distance romance, and more.

In addition, we’re celebrating our 25th venture into print with a special silver cover engineered by Tim Mullins, with a little help from paper cutout artist Paula Friedlander. If you’d like one, click here to subscribe (for U.S. folk, $5 per issue, $9 two issues, $16 four.)

And second, but hardly least, the first of the Clockwork Phoenix books is at last available for Kindle. Click here to see for yourself (and snatch one up if you want, ’tis only $3.99.)

The other two books will follow over the next couple of months.

As I’ve been preparing this book for its relaunch in e-format, I’ve had to re-read all the stories which has been quite a pleasant walk down memory lane. And so much has happened since. I tried to explain it all in a new afterword I wrote just for the electronic edition:

It occurred to me, too, that I should share a little about the bragging rights the Clockwork Phoenix crew of authors accumulated after the book came out. Vandana’s novelette was reprinted in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s The Year’s Best SF 14, while Deborah’s “Tailor of Time” was a finalist for the 2008 Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Short Story. Tanith’s and Laird’s short stories were included in the Locus Magazine 2008 Recommended Reading List, as was the anthology as a whole—and Laird later used “Occultation” as the title story of his 2010 collection which went on to win the Shirley Jackson Award. Editor Ellen Datlow picked David’s “Old Foss” to include in her massive anthology of feline-based speculative fiction, Tales of Wonder & Imagination. Tales by John Grant, Leah, Laird, Cat Rambo, Kathy Sedia, Cat Sparks, Tanith, Marie, Vandana, John Wright and C.S. MacCath received honorable mentions from various “best of the year” anthologies, and all of the stories received critical praise from some corner or other, though some reviewers mused as to whether my strange new art-for-art’s-sake anthology model actually worked.

Re-reading it now, I can’t imagine putting this book together any other way.

My thanks to Elizabeth Campbell at Dark Cargo, who posted a new review of Clockwork Phoenix and a somewhat discombobulated (but hopefully still fun) interview with me over the weekend, called “Mike Allen 101,” talking about all this crazy stuff I do.

Posted in Clockwork Phoenix, Editing, Mythic Delirium